A Celtics Blogger Christmas Carol: Chapter 1
Seasons Greetings, readers! This week, Full Court Press welcomes you to the holiday season with the first installment of A Celtics Blogger Christmas Carol, a tale of the fretting and redemption of a typical Celtics web chronicler. As always, comments are welcome (especially the positive ones). Successive chapters will run every Tuesday and Thursday until the last week before Christmas. I hope you enjoy them. So without further ado…
A Celtics Blogger Christmas Carol
By Kevin Henkin
Chapter 1
What is with all this damn happiness, I wondered as I watched the crowds scurry by my street-level office window. Sure, it was Christmas Eve and they were all probably headed home to their loved ones. Regardless, a mug of spiked nog, a pile of colorfully wrapped gifts and the love of family did absolutely nothing to address the many needs of the Boston Celtics. How could people remain so glib when their team remained so obviously flawed? After all, the Celtics were so thin at point guard. And what about the minutes allocation of the Big Three? Did people honestly think that these aging superstars could last into deep spring while shouldering so much of the load during the regular season? It was pure and utter nonsense. Regardless, they continued to parade by my window, happy, joyous, oblivious to the falling snow and to the shortcomings of their professional basketball team. Disgusted, I shuttered the windows and returned to the task at hand, hitting the play button on my remote. Again, I watched a replay of Tony Allen driving hard to the basket, falling just short on his lift and thus enabling a defender to swat the ball harmlessly away. Wringing my hands, I transposed my frets onto my computer screen, shaped them into a column and posted it to the site. By the time I left my office, the city streets were clear, save for the occasional lonely cab and a heavily coated homeless man mumbling something about Greg Minor’s heavy furniture. I walked back to my apartment and changed into a bathrobe and pajamas. Setting up in my recliner with a beer and a hearty bowl of hot soup, I eventually fell asleep watching Game 7 of the 1984 finals on DVD.
Sometime later, I was awoken by loud banging on my front door. Cursing like George Karl, I shuffled to the door and peered through the peep hole. Peering back at me was a young man with a huge nose, dressed in a food vendor uniform of blue and black. I opened the door.
“Crunch ‘n Munch?” he shouted and then danced around like a ninny.
I slammed the door in his face but it was a useless exercise because he passed right through the door into my apartment, grinning and shaking a box of snacks in my face. Tethered to his uniform and dragging behind him were several boxes of tasty caramelized peanuts and popcorn treats. I instantly recognized him as the shameless food vendor commonly known in these parts as The Crunch ‘n Munch Guy. At his peak, he was a BU undergrad student from New York who gained a brief bit of notoriety in Boston in the 90’s for his antics at both Fenway Park and what was then called the Fleet Center. In a nutshell, his schtick was to dance, clap and shake in the aisles to a point where people would buy his snacks just to make him go away. Back in the day, rumor had it that he annoyed Rick Pitino so much that the coach actually yelled at him during a game. After graduating from BU, he thankfully left Boston, only to resurface a few years later as a contestant on an especially ridiculous reality show set on an island. The last I’d seen of him, he was begging his fellow contestants in vain not to vote him off the show.
“I am the Ghost of Celtics Past,” he announced before resuming his loony dance for a few more seconds. Then he stood and waited, perhaps for me to scream in terror, or maybe just to buy one of his boxes to make him go away. Clearly, this was all just a terrible, terrible dream.
“Hold on a second,” I said. “You’re just a ghost?”
He looked confused. “Yes.”
“What a relief,” I said. “For a minute, I was afraid you were the real Crunch ‘n Munch Guy, back to promote a new season of Paradise Hotel.”
“No, no,” he said. “We’re saving that for The Apocalypse. In the meantime, we have many people and places to see.” With that, the two of us were mysteriously transported to the musty old Boston Garden, sitting in the front row of the balcony at center court.
“Hey, nice bathrobe, you loser!” a drunk yelled from three rows behind. He threw a cup of popcorn at us.
“Wait a minute,” I said, dusting off the popcorn. “They can see us?”
“Of course. We’re not made of glass. Now just pay attention and watch the game.”
I looked down at the beautiful parquet floor sprawled out below us. There before our eyes were Bird, Parish, McHale, Ainge, DJ. Maxwell, Henderson, Carr and all the rest of them. I was even happy to see Carlos Clark. They were getting ready to tip off against the Lakers.
“Look at how short their shorts are,” the ghost snickered. “I’ve seen less leg revealed in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition.’
All around us, the place shook with noise and energy bordering on pandemonium despite the suffocating heat.
“Remember this place?” the ghost said.
“The original Garden,” I said, still reverent about the sagging old sweat box that smelled like a urinal cake and had a higher percentage of obstructed view seats than a circus clown car. “This is the 1984 team. And with this sweltering heat, it must be the Finals. Wow.”
The ghost nodded with the tranquility of Ray Allen at the free throw line. “This remains your favorite memory of the Celtics, does it not?”
“It does. I watched the last game of this series at home with my father. I remember shaking before the game because I was so nervous that they’d lose.”
“Why the nerves?” he said.
“Because I believed then, as I still believe now, that the Lakers were the better team that year. But the McHale clothesline on Rambis changed everything. The Celtics were simply tougher, physically and mentally. They wanted it more, and that’s why they won. Unlike in 1986, it was about more than just their collective talent that year. It was an amazing championship.” I shook my head at the memory of it.
“Good times, right?” the food vendor said.
“The best. Look at the Big Three. I mean, just look at them. The real Big Three, still in their prime. Man, things will never be the same.”
“Nor should they be.” He paused. “Do you understand what I mean by that?”
“No.”
“Then when have much more work to do. Let’s go.”
To be continued…
